COP HATER (1958)

First try filming 87th PRECINCT, the popular paperback police procedurals by Ed McBain, is both pulpy and priceless.  Pulpy because this cheaply made/down & dirty NYC indie looks a good half-step below episodic tv of the time (unintentionally perfect for what hack director William Berke is going for); priceless because it preserves bits of NYC back-alley ‘nabs’ from back in the day.  Even rarer, real interiors: ‘dive bars,’ tenement halls & kitchens, plus aging institutional buildings filmed check-by-jowl with whatever faceless underdressed sets they could afford.  And doubly priceless as it also preserves a rising new style of urban Method Acting (the post-Elia Kazan model) that John Cassavetes codified starting with FACES/’64.  The big difference that whereas Cassavetes & Co. never seemed to have met a person who wasn’t a struggling Method Actor, this team act as if they’ve stayed in touch with paid-by-the-piece laborers.  The lack of self-referential mannerism, even when the acting’s awkward, keeps them relatable and believable.  With debuts (or nearly so) for Jerry Orbach, Vincent Gardenia, a lithe/sexy Robert Loggia, et al.*  Story and execution nothing special, but it’ll do as a series of cops from the 87th get randomly shot.  Some psycho?  A gang of trouble-making toughs who failed the audition for the original cast of WEST SIDE STORY?  A gun humper hot for his latest 45 caliber?  Well, it works for the 1'15" running time; and the books would go on to be a tv series, tv movies and various international iterations, while McBain would also go on.  You know him better under his real name, Evan Hunter.  The one he used writing THE BIRDS/’63 for Alfred Hitchcock.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Check out Glenn Cannon, co-starring with Orbach at the time in THE THREE-PENNY OPERA at the Theater de Lys, the longrun Brecht/Weill/Blitzstein revival that established Off-Broadway as a commercial enterprise.  Cannon’s great as a punk kid being interviewed by a slick newspaper reporter.  The whole thing looking like a Chelsea pick-up.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Loggia’s fiancée is written as ‘deaf and dumb,’ actress Ellen Parker who plays her is neither.  Still, kudos (to novelist McBain?) for making her condition largely incidental, not the focus of the story.  Very unusual at the time.